PEORIA MAGAZINE July 2022

threatening congenital anomaly, doing one operation and giving their whole life back. If you can tell me something better than that, I’d like to know what it is. … Or a kid who gets hit by a car and is about to die, and you whisk him into the operating room and you put him back together and he lives. That’s good stuff. “And I got to do that over and over again for 30-something years.” UNCLE SAM CALLS AGAIN Pearl would land at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland – among the nation’s most prestigious, the place U.S. presidents go. While there, he enjoyed access to “the biggest medivac operation in the world. It’s called the Air Force,” which brought him sick children from around the globe. But as the calendar turned on a new decade, America went to war in the Persian Gulf. Again, Pearl was sent overseas, just four days following his wedding. Ultimately, he would organize a 150-vehicle convoy from Saudi Arabia 100 miles north into Iraq, 15 miles south of the Euphrates River – “before GPS … with a map and a compass, basically” – and establish the field hospital closest to the action. He would joke with fellowmedics that they had “done something substantially wrong” with their lives to deserve “105 degrees and … sweating like pigs in the middle of a desert.” American casualties were limited, but Pearl remembers treating a ward of Iraqi POWs, one a Republican Guard captain who’d awake from surgery to remark, “Ah, I see we have won the war and forced you to take care of us.” To which Pearl responded: “ ‘Look down at your hands. What do you see?’ He looks down and says, ‘I see I am locked to the bed.’ I said, ‘We won. You lost.’” DR. PEARL, MEET PEORIA Pearl was back at Walter Reed when theHospital for SickChildren inToronto rang. He still owed a year to the Army, but it was a chance to work at one of the best pediatric facilities in the world.

COMBAT IN A CONTROVERSIAL WAR

“To a large degree, I didn’t. And that cost me.” MED SCHOOL AND ‘THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE’ After three years inGermany inwhich Pearl rose in rank and responsibility, he found himself having breakfast in Washington, D.C. with three-star Gen. Glenn Otis, who’d later add another star and command the U.S. Army in Europe. He asked Pearl about his future plans, told him the Army was changing and that “guys like you aren’t going to have the kind of career you deserve. … If you figure something out, I’ll help you.” Otis made good on that promise, writing a letter of recommendation for Pearl’s admission tomedical school inwhich he described him as someone who “knows how to make life and death decisions” and “always makes the right one.” Accepted to Ohio’s Wright State University, Pearl – already in his 30s — initially thought it would be classwork, a three-year residency, and a job. Instead, hepickedpediatric surgery, whichwould require eight years of additional training and make him a 43-year-old rookie. “How dumb was that?” Pearl says now, laughing. He got the same reaction at a med school reunion. “I said, ‘Life is not a race, it’s a process, but in actual fact, pediatric surgery is the most fun you can havewith your clothes on.’ And I really meant that,” he said. “Imagine taking a baby who has a life

Pearl was slotted as an infantry machine gunner before it occurred to him that “if I’m going to be cannon fodder, I’d rather be lieutenant cannon fodder than PFC cannon fodder.” Off hewent toofficer candidate school in Georgia, followed by Texas, where he experienced another epiphany: “If you’re going to be an infantry second lieutenant, it might be more fun to be a flying second lieutenant than a walking second lieutenant.” Next stop, flight school in Savannah, Georgia. The Cobra gunship was then a new helicopter, and “it was lethal,” said Pearl, who would arrive in Vietnam to assume the controls of one in 1969, joining 500,000 other U.S. soldiers. Over the next year, he saw significant action. He vividly remembers three emergency landings – “the hydraulics went out, I threw a tail rudder and engine failure” – fromwhich he walked away without a scratch. One night, reminiscent of the movie “Platoon,” 12 Cobras went out near the Cambodian border to provide close air support to ground troops. Eleven were hit with anti-aircraft fire – all but Pearl’s. He was ready to go home. And he made a vow. “When I left Vietnam and the plane was taking off … I literally thought to myself, ‘I’m not going to take bullshit off of anybody for the rest of my life.

46 JULY 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE